^There's no way that's the finished product. It has to be scaffolding. Blackstone isn't going to pay hundreds of thousands in rent per month to stare at the gorgeous NYC skyline through all that cross-bracing.

Could it be a slightly different version of the protective cocoon that rises with the building as the floors get higher. Same as the yellow structure at the top Hudson yards buildings

Just looking at the pattern in which they are expanding it is more in line with typical cladding. But I have no idea at this point. It would be the only project in the city (out of a lot) using that particular form.

Just looking at the pattern in which they are expanding it is more in line with typical cladding. But I have no idea at this point. It would be the only project in the city (out of a lot) using that particular form.

Yeah it's all very weird but I have a hard time believing that's the final cladding (even for mechanical floors)... Doesn't match any of the renderings and doesn't match similar buildings Brookfield has put up like this one in Calgary:

^Yep, it's just sophisticated scaffolding to facilitate the glass install. You can see a platform at the bottom and also the hydraulics, which will help this system climb in unison. Ground-breaking stuff!

^Yep, it's just sophisticated scaffolding to facilitate the glass install. You can see a platform at the bottom and also the hydraulics, which will help this system climb in unison. Ground-breaking stuff!

I think it is like the system they used in Toronto to reclad First Canada Place, just a different climbing mechanism (the blue things)

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"But a city can be smothered by too much reverence for its past. The skyline must keep acquiring new peaks, because the day we consider it complete and untouchable is the day the city begins to die." - Justin Davidson - May 2010 Issue of New York

Reminds me of a Canary Wharf style of development on steroids. Or is Canary Wharf still bigger in terms of overall space, i'm not sure? Probably is given it's been around for decades. Anyway, the plan seems to have been a major success for the developers. Bet they are raking it in.

Yes it is. A lot of people may look at the skyline and say, why does New York need to build so much? Isn't the city and the skyline already overbuilt? Hasn't it been that way for decades already? And that's the point. It's rebirth and renewal. All of those skyscrapers that made the New York skyline so famous, all of that skyscraper density, was built decades ago. That, along with the rise in residential towers, gives us not only a remaking of the Manhattan skyline, but those of the surrounding skylines of Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey as well. This one complex alone, with its 6 msf of space should be the "large" development of this decade, but it's overshadowed by it's neighbor. Even the redevelopment of the WTC (that's still rebuilding) has taken a backseat to what's rising on the west side.

I keep saying it, but this is a very exciting time. The skyline changing game may not be new to New York, but it is for us as we get to witness it. Forget everything you know about the skyline, it's all changing. The rest of the world may be catching up, and it should, but even and established skyline can embrace the new. It has to if the city is going to thrive.

Hardcore tenacity and the need to adapt are practically hardwired into it's existence...despite the obnoxious presence of some with access to power and authority to play the "irrational exhuberance" card...you know...NIMBY's.